Abstract

Consumption of creep feed pre-weaning is thought to stimulate food intake and growth after weaning (Bruininx e al., 2004). Creep feed intake has traditionally been assessed on the basis of average intake per piglet, which is erroneous because it assumes that all piglets in a litter eat the same amount of feed. Coloured markers can be used in the feed to distinguish between piglets eating different amounts of creep feed by assessing how many times faeces of each piglet is stained with the marker. (Bruininx et al., 2004). In this study we determined whether creep feed intake of individual piglets could be determined qualitatively during lactation using a dye related to post-weaning performance.